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Art. XVIII.—Description of Persia and Mesopotamia in the year 1340 a.d. from the Nuzhat-al-Ḳulūb of Ḥamd-Allah Mustawfi, with a summary of the contents of that work

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

The description of Kurdistān given by Mustawfi (which Ḥājji Khalfah has copied almost verbatim into his Jihān Numā) presents a number of small problems which I find myself unable satisfactorily to solve. Kurdistān, or the Land of the Kurds, is not mentioned by the earlier Arab geographers, and it appears to have been first erected into a separate government under the Saljūḳs, who, in the time of Sulaymān Shah, divided it off from the rest of the Jibāl Province, which they called Persian ‘Irāḳ, as explained in Chapter 2. Sulaymān Shāh, under whose rule Kurdistān appears to have flourished greatly, surnamed Abūh (or Ayūh) was the nephew of Sultan Sinjar, who had appointed him governor of this province, and Sulaymān Shāh at a later date—that is, from 554 to 556 (1159 to 1161 a.d.)—became for a short time the Saljūḳ Sultan of the Two ‘Irāḳs, and chief of his house.

Type
Original Communications
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1902

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References

page 510 note 1 On his march from Tustar to Shīrāz, Timur, according to ‘Alī of Yazd (i, 600), after crossing the Ãb-Shīrīn, camped on the Plain of Lāshtar, and two days later coming to the river of the Sha'b Bavvān valley, halted at Basht. Both places will be found on the modern map, and naturally suggest themselves as possible alternatives, one or other, for the town of Kurdistān mentioned by Ḥamd-Allah; but unfortunately both would appear to be out of the question, and too far south (being well within the boundary of Fārs) ever to have been counted as of Kurdistān. The Jihān Numā, as usual, merely copies the Nuzhat without comment.

page 518 note 1 This is the spelling of the Fārs Nāmah (f. 79b), who says it was so named after the great engineer Hakīm Burāzah of the days of King Ardashīr. The MSS. generally give the name as Barārah.

page 519 note 1 According to Ḥamd-Allah (L. 174g) Abarḳūh was remarkable for the fact that no Jew could survive for more than forty days who settled here. Hence these people were not found among the population of the town. Further in Abarḳūh stood the tomb of the celebrated saint surnamed Ṭāūs-al-Ḥaramayn—‘Peacock of the Two Sanctuaries,’ viz. Mecca and Medina—and it was a known fact that his shrine would never suffer itself to be covered by a roof. However often a roof was erected over the tomb, it was invariably destroyed by a super-natural power, lest the saint's bones should become the object of an idolatrous worship. The same phenomenon is said by Ibn Baṭūṭah (ii, 113) to be characteristic of the shrine of Ibn Hanbal at Baghdad; and ProfessorGoldziher, has some interesting remarks on this subject in his Muhammedanische Studien (i, 257)Google Scholar.

page 522 note 1 So named to distinguish it from Juvaym [35], one stage to the north-west of Shíráz (see Route xxxiii). This last is sometimes (incorrectly) written Juvayn; and in this case must not he confounded either with the city of Juvayn in Sīstān to the north of Zaranj (see Route xvii), or with the Juvayn District of Khurāsān (see Chapter 17) lying between Jãjarm and Sabzivār.

page 531 note 1 The Bombay Lithograph gives Māshīz for Narmāshīr, but the latter reading is that of all the best MSS. and agrees with the statement that it was a town founded by Ardashīr Bābagān, for Māshīz is a modern place.

page 531 note 2 The history of Hurmuz is obscure; the best account of its rulers that I have met with will be found in the Majmal' -al-Ansāb, an historical work written about the year 743 (a.d. 1343). Of this work our Society possessed a MS., and another copy (Add. MS. 16, 696) will be found in the British Museum Library. Dates are unfortunately very generally omitted in the Majma'-al-Ansāh, but it gives an account of the Kings of Hurmuz, as also of the Atabeg Chāūlī and others, who ruled in Fārs before the advent of the Sunḳūrī Atabegs, hence it is a valuable authority. For the present state of Hurmuz see the papers by Captain Stifle in the Geographical Magazine for 1874, vol. i, p. 12Google Scholar, and J.R.G.S., 1894, p. 160Google Scholar.

page 534 note 1 In Ḳazvīnī (ii, 299) printed Kishm by mistake: but right in Yāḳūt (iv, 278).